


Time After Time

by QueenOfNewOrleans22



Category: 28 Days Later (2002)
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26147785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfNewOrleans22/pseuds/QueenOfNewOrleans22
Summary: Things will never be normal again, but at the very least, they have to try.
Relationships: Jim (28 Days Later)/Selena (28 Days Later)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Time After Time

Thirty days in Quarantine. 

Seven-hundred-and-twenty hours spent in a space too small with people that are weary and don't trust no matter what is said.

Selena and Jim and Hannah, three people bound together by one tragedy. Two women and a man who saw things that never should have transpired, and are now floating in a sea of questions. 

_How did it start? What's going to happen to us? What's going to happen to the UK? How will be rebuild?_

There's military soldiers and officials, men and women alike, polite but equally weary of the potential infected. There's people from everywhere and nowhere at once, asking questions and taking blood tests, intent on getting to the bottom of the infection just as they are intent on getting everybody back on their feet. 

The rescued people do not know how to communicate like proper people anymore. They're as rabid as the creatures that everybody was so desperate to escape, eyes wild and teeth bared, scared of everybody and flinching away from the searching hands that come to them. 

"We are glad to have everybody here." A woman from the embassy claims. Her eyes are cold, despite her words, and she is hiding behind armed men with guns who would gladly shoot anybody who stepped over the painted yellow line. "You're all in good hands." 

Selena sneers in response, lost in the crowd of people. She is tired of being poked and prodded like an animal from some laboratory, and just wants for it all to go back to normal, despite knowing that nothing would ever be the same. 

She sleeps in a small, hard cot. Her back aches, and the frame squeaks noisily through the night. The cot is actually normal sized, but Hannah is scared, and creeps in the darkness, slips into the too small bed, memories that haunt a girl who didn't even get to really say goodbye driving her to sleep in a bed with a woman she doesn't even really know. 

The men and women are separated during the night to avoid the obvious. Selena is more bitter about that than she cares to admit, but can tell that Jim feels the same whenever they have to say goodbye and go to their separate rooms. 

Not because of the sex. 

No. 

After what they experienced, Selena doesn't care about that. She just wants to be close to Jim, feel that platonic intimacy that they'd managed to gain over a few weeks by themselves in the mountains. It begins to anger her more and more because _do these people know what they've just been through?_

Hannah is cheerful in the morning, but she sticks close to Selena and rarely strays far. She meets a boy named Landon, who is thin as a stick and pale as a vampire, but is sweet and sits with her outside, talking about things that don't matter. 

There's a bunch of people who don't deal with things well. Whether it be the memories that never go away, or the knowledge that they will spend the rest of their lives, haunted by dead mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. 

Every few weeks, somebody commits suicide. They jump from the roof or slit their wrists or incapacitate a guard, steal a gun, and shoot themselves through the head. 

Poor Landon, haunted by the mother he left behind and the father who turned mad, sneaks a knife from breakfast, and cuts himself while hidden away in a closet. He bleeds out before anybody finds him, and is promptly buried in an unmarked grave.

Selena is the one to break the news to Hannah, who's already lost more than anybody, much less a teenager, _a child,_ should, and holds the girl while she cries. As the broken sobs fill the stale air, Selena curses the world and everybody within it. 

Jim is calm, all things considered. He smiles easy, and laughs even easier. Selena wonders what goes on in the man's mind, if he has shoved all those memories away, deep in an unmarked grave just like all those people who couldn't take it, or if that's just his way of dealing with things. 

"I just don't think about it." Jim says when asked. 

But then he moves too suddenly, or laughs too harshly, and it pulls at his still healing wound, and suddenly, all those memories come rushing back. 

In the night, as Hannah and countless other women sleep all around her, Selena thinks of home. She hates being weak, and only allows such a thing when there's nobody around to see the tears gleam in jaded brown eyes. 

Her mother, gone. Her grandparents, gone. Sisters and brother, gone. 

Husband, gone. 

During these times, Selena thinks of Mark. They met during the first few days of it all happening, and didn't leave each other's side because who was to say they weren't the last people left? 

Was Mark even infected? Had Selena acted too soon? 

All those questions would remain unanswered. 

"You're all free to leave." Captain Mulhavey says. 

They leave. 

The infected have died off, and the American forces are beginning to move in, hoping to maybe rebuild what had been lost. 

Hannah has no remaining family. 

Selena and Jim manage to foster her, against all odds. It was a temporary decision on the judge's part, based mainly on the fact that it was clear that Hannah needed to be with people who understood what had happened, and shouldn't be separated from the people that clearly cared for her. Not yet, at least. 

They relocate to a house in the mountains provided by the government. It's better than the previous house, abandoned by the previous owners. Selena returns to her job as a Chemist, and Jim begins work as a server. Hannah goes to a specialized school for all the children who had been torn away from their normal lives. 

Everything is okay. 

But at the same time, it's not. 

"What are y' thinking about?" Jim asked, resting his chin atop Selena's head as they lay in bed at night, unable to sleep. Hannah is in the other room, and the idea of her having a nightmare and waking up alone is enough to make them both want to just sleep in the same bedroom together. 

"Nothing." Selena replied, lying through her teeth. 

That night, they dream of the same thing- 

Chaos, screaming. Bright red eyes and snarls. 

When they awaken, both of them head downstairs, exhausted and irritable, to find Hannah cheerfully whistling her way through breakfast. 

They make it work. 

When Selena first learns that they are going to try and integrate people back to the Isle Of Dogs, she is too angry to speak. 

It won't go well. And it doesn't, but nobody is surprised. 

Christmas rolls around. Selena and Jim buy each other promise rings and Hannah cries because this is the first Christmas she's ever spent without her father but, despite the sense of loss, it's a happy time. 

They can almost forget. 

Eight months after everything transpired, Selena wakes up. Jim is shaking her and Hannah is packing a bag and the telly ( _television,_ she reminds herself) is put on the news. 

The screen shows chaos. 

_Rage virus in U.S, Panic in the streets._


End file.
